


Set-Point

by radondoran



Category: Monsters University (2013)
Genre: Fever, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nonhuman Biology, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-02
Updated: 2013-07-02
Packaged: 2017-12-16 21:53:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/867016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radondoran/pseuds/radondoran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Everybody gets sick their first semester of college."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Set-Point

"The center of fear in the brain."

Mike tossed the plastic ball into the air, keeping up the regular rhythm of questions and answers. "The amygdala." He caught the ball.

"Right. The three major fear hormones."

Toss. "Adrenaline." Catch.

"Right—"

Toss. "Noradrenaline." Catch.

"Right—"

Toss. "And cortisol." Catch.

"Right! The center of fear memory."

Toss. "Hippocampu—"

Mike fumbled the catch as the carillon in the clock tower across the lawn abruptly struck up its cacophonous and off-key rendition of the "Maple Wilt Rag". "Yeesh," he remarked, picking up the ball again. "You know, it's great how they're trying to expose us to culture, but—"

He looked up and was, as always, disconcerted to find that his roommate had vanished. The textbook was still there, though, hovering a couple feet above a flattened space in the grass. "Randy?"

The monster holding the textbook quickly recovered his usual color and opacity. "Sorry."

"I don't mind. But you know, you've been winking out like that all day. Something bothering you?"

Randy, wringing his free hands, flashed a nervous grin. "Nothing. Just tired, I guess. Sorry, I'm really trying to get a handle on it—"

"Hey, it's fine. And maybe it is time for a break. What time is it, anyway?" The bell tower's dissonant clanging wound down, and a single melancholy note counted off the hours. "... Nine, ten, eleven," Mike counted aloud. "Noon already? I've got to get to work!" He scooped his pencils and textbooks into his backpack and shouldered it. "All right, catch you later. Try not to learn too much stuff without me, huh?"

"Yeah—well—try not to run over any pedestrians," Randy countered.

"That was one time!" And with a wave, Mike turned across the lawns towards the engineering building.

* * *

When Mike returned to Room 319 that afternoon, the door was locked. That wasn't so unusual; Randy had probably gone to the library or something. Mike swung open the door, tossed his backpack onto his chair—and then stopped dead, because as a matter of fact, Randy was home. He was prone, stretched flat on the floor in the space between the two twin beds. His head faced the door, and his eyes were closed.

"What the—?" In half a second Mike was crouched beside him, shaking him by the shoulders.

The green eyes opened and blinked up at him. "Oh. Hi, Mike."

"Jeez, Randy, I thought you were dead! Although, I have heard that if your roommate dies, they give you A's in all your classes. But then again, I don't need their pity grades... That's not the point! What the heck are you doing?"

"Trying to get warm," said Randy, a little hoarsely, and his eyes drooped shut again.

"Warm?" It wasn't cold. It wasn't even properly autumn yet. They'd had the window open for weeks—but now the window was closed. The curtain was open, and Randy was lying directly in the yellow rectangle of glass-bright afternoon sun. Something clicked in Mike's brain.

"Oh, I think I get it. This is an ectotherm thing, huh? You've got a fever."

Randy sounded embarrassed as well as miserable. "Yeah."

"Oh, no. That bites. You seemed kind of off earlier, but I didn't think you were coming down with a fever. I mean—well, I guess technically you're giving yourself a fever. How does that work, anyway?" Mike hoped it wasn't rude to ask. Monster physiology varied widely, and college was often the first opportunity one had to be in prolonged close contact with anyone besides one's family—whose physiology did not in most cases differ greatly from one's own.

"It's, um—" Randy coughed weakly to clear his throat. "I'm sorry. I feel really cold. I need to get warm. It's stupid, but if I don't warm up I could get a lot sicker."

Mike nodded. "Makes sense."

"This is really lame," Randy went on. "Sorry."

"Quit apologizing! It's not your fault. Everybody gets sick first semester of college. It's the new environment or something."

"You haven't," Randy pointed out.

Mike thought about it. "Sure I did! I had that, uh, cold thing a couple weeks back, remember?" It wasn't actually a lie, but as the two days of mildly scratchy throat had done next to nothing to stem Mike Wazowski's usual loquacious enthusiasm, he supposed he couldn't blame anybody for not having noticed. "Look, is there anything I can do to help? Want me to go with you to the infirmary?"

"Uh-uh," Randy murmured. "It's not that bad."

"OK, how about I go to the cafeteria and smuggle you back some soup?"

The limp form on the floor made a noise that was more than tinged with disgust.

"Yeah, I don't blame you." Mike stood up, transferred his bag to his desk, and sat down, a bit awkwardly, in the chair. He looked down at Randy sprawled on the floor, then up at the sunlit window, and back to Randy. "Hey, uh, I don't mean to keep bothering you, but can you still do the color change thing?"

Randy lifted his head enough to squint, annoyed, in Mike's direction.

"No, I—I'm not trying to be rude. It's just that if you turned black, I bet you'd absorb more heat. You know, if that's what you need to do."

Randy blinked rapidly, twice. "Yeah," he mumbled, tentatively. He shut his eyes again, took a slow breath—and then before Mike could blink, Randy had gone black: a deep, glossy eel-black that shone against the dull floor in each arm and leg, and down to the tip of his long tail.

"Wow," Mike breathed. Then, aloud, "You're reflecting some of the light. Try something a little more matte."

Another breath, and the quality of the black changed entirely. Mike knew, intellectually, that Randy's scaly skin was still there—but to his eye the texture was exactly that of black felted wool. Randy might have been nothing but an oddly-shaped dress coat, left carelessly off its hanger.

Mike stared. "I'll never get used to that trick. That is so cool."

Randy's eyes opened, unnaturally bright in contrast, and his teeth glimmered as he managed a chuckle. "You're the first one to think so." He looked tired again. "Back home everybody used to laugh at me for—you know—disappearing. I know, I know, it's dumb. I just—I get so nervous, and I just want to hide, and it's so stupid! What kind of a scarer hides?"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Mike stood up and quickly grabbed the appropriate textbook from his shelf. "Every scarer hides! I mean, if you want to get technical it falls under the umbrella category of Stealth and Sneaking, type B,"—he flipped to the appropriate page and pushed it at Randy's face—"but it's important! The only reason we haven't had any extensive discussion of it in class yet is because it's so advanced. Listen, Randy, you gotta stop letting these big beasty guys intimidate you. I bet you anything that when it comes to the test, you are gonna end up being ten times scarier than that Sullivan jerk."

"You think so?"

"I know so. And the best part is, the big lug won't even see us coming." Mike's voice had taken on the gleeful note it always had when he spoke of his rivalry with Sullivan, and Randy let out a small laugh in sympathy.

Then he broke into a soft fit of coughing that left him cringing, his eyes squeezed shut. "Ow," he murmured between quick breaths. "Darn it. Ow."

Mike had shut the textbook and slid it carelessly across the floor back towards his desk. "What's the matter?" he asked, crouching again.

"Head hurts. Everything hurts."

"Man, you're in pretty bad shape, huh?" Mike reached out and laid a hand gently behind Randy's eyes, taking care to avoid the antennae. The dissonance between the texture he saw and the one he felt was unnerving, and the stereotypical caring action didn't give him much information. The smooth skin felt reasonably warm, he supposed, but what was it supposed to feel like? "Is, uh, is this working OK? You're not getting too hot or anything, are you?"

"Uh-uh. This is good. Thanks." But as he spoke, Mike felt the muscles under his hand tighten. Randy's hands clenched; his tail curled slightly. "No," he mumbled. "Cold. It's cold again."

This time Mike felt it too. The room was cooler. The hardwood floor became cool to the touch; the rectangle of sunlight had gone. He looked up at the window to find the view abruptly gray.

"Cloud cover," he said, standing up to look outside. "If we're lucky it'll blow over quick too."

He glanced back at Randy in concern, and then jumped at a sudden loud crack of thunder. Randy started and disappeared. As the rolling thunder faded away and the first drops of rain began to tap on the window, he flickered back into view in his usual pale purple. "I think I'm too tired to change any more," he admitted.

"It's OK. It looks like this weather's here to stay, and it's gonna be dark soon anyway. We need a new plan." He had walked back around to Randy's head as he spoke, and now he stood in rapid and anxious thought. "Dorm heat doesn't come on until October first, it was in the handbook. I'd say we should get you somewhere warm, but you can't go out in this..." He paused. "Well, being on the floor can't be helping anymore. At least get in bed, huh?"

"Yeah... yeah." With difficulty, Randy elevated himself from the floor, and then stood up on his four feet. He blinked rapidly and put a hand up to his face. "Um—"

Mike, suspicious, had already moved in and put out an arm to steady him. Randy caught his wrist in two hands and held on alarmingly tight. "Oh boy. OK, OK. Come on. We can do this."

The next minute was awkward, Randy swaying and stumbling as his four hands scrambled for a hold on Mike's short round body. But Mike managed at last to half-lift him into the bed, where he collapsed, breathing hard.

"OK. Blankets." He grabbed the one from his bed and threw it over Randy, then went to the wardrobe to look for more.

"But—"

"I know, I know," said Mike. "This is just temporary, slow the heat loss. Here." He draped an extra blanket over the first, and pulled it up over Randy's shoulders.

Randy huddled deep into the sheets, clutching the covers close with every hand. "Mike?" he said, looking out with desperately wide eyes. "I'm freezing."

"I know, buddy. I'll think of something. Just hang in there." He moved away to make for the door.

"Wait—"

"Listen, you're gonna be fine. I'll be right back, OK? Fifteen minutes. Hang in there." And Mike ran out, letting the door slam shut behind him.

* * *

Whether it was fifteen minutes, or three minutes, or an hour, Randy couldn't tell. He couldn't have made out the clock even if he hadn't dreaded the idea of opening his eyes. The rain was coming down hard now, a steady susurrus on the lawns and halls of campus and a syncopated tip-tap-tap on the window, interspersing itself with the thunder and the pounding of his head.

He grabbed again at the blankets, trying uselessly to squirm into a warmer position. He did not shiver; if he could have shivered, this wouldn't have been such a problem. But every cell in his body wanted the temperature turned up, and so they were sending through his fogged brain the incessant message that he was cold, cold, cold.

The cold, illusionary though it was, weighed down his limbs and clutched at his chest. He felt sluggish with it. Yet he could not relax, could not let all of his mind slow down to match. The sound of the rain, and the texture of the sheets, and the constant consciousness of cold, beat at his senses until he gradually became conscious of another sensation.

Two sensations: a feeling of warmth, and the sound of Mike's voice again, soft at his side.

Randy turned towards the warmth with new energy, reached out to embrace it with every limb. "Mike, is that you? Come here—"

"Whoa, relax, would you?" said Mike, not so close this time. "Quit squirming and help me out here."

Randy opened his eyes to find Mike standing beside the bed, fussing with the covers again. The source of the heat, then, was— "An electric blanket?"

"I told you I'd think of something," said Mike, triumph thrilling in his voice even under the softness of bedside manner. "Jeffrey's mom is overprotective and rich—she sent him this the first week. I traded him your next batch of cupcakes on account, I hope that's OK."

"Uh—sure." Randy had managed to trade off the heavy blankets for the electric one, and he burrowed gratefully into the quickly rising heat. He glanced up in surprise. "Wait, he likes them?"

"Well, yeah," said Mike simply. He took Randy's nearest hand out from under the blanket and pressed the plastic controller into it. "Hey, you're gonna turn this thing down if you get too hot, right?"

"Yeah." Randy drew the controller back underneath the blanket and held it close, letting his eyes shut again.

Mike started to step away from the bed, then hesitated. "Mind if I keep my desk lamp on and study a little more? I don't want to leave you alone."

"Go ahead," Randy murmured. "Thanks, chum." He was already drifting off. His head still ached; his throat still hurt; he still felt queasy and tired and all the rest. The freezing cold, though, was rapidly being dissipated, and his body relaxed in the much-desired heat.

He knew that within a few hours he would wake up uncomfortably hot, and that it would be a matter of days before he felt himself again. All the same, this was nice. Freshman year wasn't so bad—nothing was really so bad—when there was somebody around to keep an eye on you.

**Author's Note:**

> (This was inspired by reading about [behavioral fever in lizards](http://www.agriculture.de/acms1/conf6/ws5asick.htm) and other ectotherms--but all actual details about monster biology, etc., are completely made up.)


End file.
